While her keen eyes ranged around she saw a square of whiteness on the floor, by the table, and went to it quickly, with an instinctive feeling that it was something which would betray Tyndale, or Herman. When she bent down and caught it up she knew that it was a printed sheet. Under it lay another; under that, again, a third. By the dim light she saw that they were printed folios, and one glance was sufficient to show her that they were proofs of the New Testament, such as she had seen in her father's hidden cellar. She glanced towards the door, wondering whether the soldiers were there, and had seen that she had some papers in her hand, but the doorway was clear. Bending her head a little, she saw that the passage was empty. The men were still in Herman's room. She thought of the way out of this very real danger with her swift woman wit, and hastily unbuttoning her dress, she pushed the sheets into her bosom. It was nothing that they were crumpled. What were three sheets of printed paper compared to the lives of two men? To her, as she thrust them in, the papers seemed to make enough noise to be heard all over the house, for they crinkled in her hands, and the dampness came on her face lest she had been heard, and they should ask her what she had been doing. While she was rapidly buttoning her dress she turned her face to the window, where the rain came against the glass in heavy gusts, just as the wind drove it. Below were the soldiers of the City Guard, as when she saw them last, two lines of silent, unmoving men, with their halberds gleaming. The hope sprang in her heart that William Tyndale was really gone. He was not in Herman's room, or they would have found him. They were now going into Mistress Bengel's bedroom, and would they find him there? If not, he could not be in the house, for he was not in this chamber. Her woman mind showed her what a man might not have noticed. The bed was not made as if waiting for a sleeper. It was surprising. Herman's mother had taken away the sheets from the bed, and it looked as though the room had not been used for a long time past. Margaret centred her attention on what might be taking place in that bedroom, and because the suspense was more than she could endure, she went to see what they were doing. The men were there--the three; and it was a strange scene on which she gazed. Herman was standing aside, his back to the window, where he could see everything, and Margaret wondered at the expression on his face. It was something like injured innocence, and, painful though the tension was, she could not repress a smile when she saw him watching with the air of a person subjected to the ignominy of suspicion, and to have his home invaded for the search of a man who was not there.